We thus have three quite interesting assets that we can work with if we chose to do so: (a) a lot of bright and committed people and groups, (b) a shared common interest not only in improving physical movements but also in the sustainability and social justice agendas, and (c) an effective networking and communications medium. Which from time to time we put our heads together and put it to work for a good cause.

Support of Bogota Sustainable Mobility

The first collective action of the group was in 2000- when several hundred of us got together to support the Mayor of Bogota, Enrique Peñalosa in his proposed project for a Car Free Day which he was intending to use as a mechanism to develop increased public interest in and support for an entirely different approach to sustainable mobility in that city of seven million inhabitants living under very trying circumstances at two thousand six hundred meters, as they put it, "closer to the stars". To do this we created and publicized an instrument that we called the Bogotá Car Free Day International Guestbook which you can examine here for content and the names of those who joined this international peer support group. This cooperative group support initiative captured extensive media attention both in Colombia and world wide and served as one more small thing to support this great and still on-going transformation effort.

And as many of you know, one result was we were jointly awarded the Stockholm Prize for the Environment with the City of Bogota, for a project that kept some 850,000 cars off the road for a day during which the citizens of Bogota got together to develop a broad shared view of what they wanted their city to look like. This cooperative, independent and unfunded international/local partnership was awarded the prestigious Stockholm Challenge Prize for the Environment in June 2001.

This in turn led to the Car Free City Referendum - Vote Bogota 2000. On Sunday, the 29th of October 2000 the City of Bogota called what was without any doubt the most revolutionary and far reaching public consultations to date anywhere in the world to gain long-term public support for an entirely new transport policy and delivery system for their city. The Bogota Project, which is at the base of the referendum called for the creation of a permanent, iron-clad legal framework in support of a phased long term program of massive car reductions in the city, supported by a path breaking city-wide restructuring program already well underway and getting visible results. This program of the city once again received the collective support of our group, which you can see here. The results were extraordinary: two thirds of the city's citizens voted to create this long term framework for a fifteen year transition to a city with a hugely reduced role for private cars and a correspondingly huge and innovative push to alternative forms of mobility.

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2004 WTN Prize for Ken Livingston/London Congestion Pricing

Australia, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Germany, India, Japan, Malta, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, USA. . . and counting:

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